Show THE ETERNAL By J. does not make lie discovers before he came it and it will be after he has gone He can neither add to or take from the realities of the Secure in the nature of the eternal affirmations unmoved by the storm and tempest of unchanged by the dreamy calm of The passionate the frenzied the robed arrogance that calls itself humility do not make the false or the true they only overpower the and deceive the The end and aim of all human effort is the struggle of man has always for the one thing The desire for human welfare is the motive that keeps the world in Man learned long ago that his welfare depended upon his harmonious relation to to his fellow and to the world in which he Therefore the universal struggle has been one for a new and better adjustment between man and his The great world of religion has been or reconciliation by the great world of science has been adjustment or freedom through like a has asked for happiness as for alms science has endeavored to achieve happiness and good through Although the end of all human struggle is although the object of all effort is yet so divergent are the so conflicting the that they result in the thought-world in a state of Religions themselves are inhospitable to each The man whom one religion persecutes and becomes the saviour of another the prophets of one God slay the prophets of another and boast of This clash in the methods produces confusion of ideas until the weak and timid are carried frenzy sometimes in an abject unreasoning at other times in insane above the clouds of above the despair of the and the denial of the above them serene and tower the eternal the everlasting affirmations that and and will as long as the universe fulfills order and obeys unchanging But what is What is What is the strange mysterious quality or attribute called She may she she cannot But while science is let it be remembered that she makes no The man is not who thinks he can find in the teachings of any a denial of a sufficient first That affirmation is neither religious nor it is neither dogmatic or It is simply a necessary conclusion which the mind of man must This affirmation of a sufficient cause is made by all and it is their Tt has been uttered in countless When the old Hebrew exclaimed the heavens declare the glory of and the firmament his he was' saying in other words that hack of the phenomena of firmament there must be some sufficient and the Hebrew called it If the materialist says that all we see of life and of thought and of love and all and aspirations and he says these arc but the refinements of they had their origin in matter and this is one of their complex then we say that the materialist has simply uttered the name of the first cause in other Man's When the Christian says that God in the beginning made the the and all that is in he has simply uttered his own partial and particular interpretation of the same great human conclusion thai there is somewhere and somehow a supreme and sufficient We need not be distressed by the different use of It can make no difference whether we call God or as long as we don't know what spirit or matter of God it cannot make any difference whether we call Him simply blind or the expression of as long as blind force and the expression of law-have within them the potency of intelligence and the moral Morals Not The second affirmation is that the great universe is one Of The knowledge of the orderly universe is the contribution which science has made to The persuasion that the world is governed by law and by lies at the basis of all There can be religion without but there cannot be morals without In the dark ages religion and morals The conviction of the universe governed by from which man cannot leads the mind to to to leads at last to and the acceptance of The public schools are more vital to moral progress than are the Sunday The conviction of the reign of natural law is more important than the conviction of The in fact corollaries of the study of Morals have advanced in proportion as intelligence has Fatalist and The third affirmation is the conviction of the possible co-operation between man and the world in which he There have been two extreme one of the the other that of the One of them has held that man is a a without any power of self-determination or any latitude of that he is here determined partly by his partly by his and altogether by the stern and inexorable decrees of The religionist has held substantially the same idea expressed in different He has said that on account of early transgressions by the progenitors of the was a slave to bound by although he had the power to The real truth is that inis world is neither master nor he is neither bound nor Is he but his freedom enlarges as his intelligence Freedom Is Man is free in proportion as he allies himself with nature's He is powerful in d to his good right arm f force of m the measure of and his with natural This is and this js his It does not revelations or inspirations quires simple sequences of deeds the lilted entire escape is forever and yet j to heal restore and perfect it Basis of As to these three great there can be no among intelligent h their boldest form they are by They the basis of all offer one one one ample They i no God and none of lis 1 deeds or provinces j If men were not possessed ma 1 desire for there need be m The the moral the It-man loving men and women of world side by in unbroken march toward ft day that is to under one com mon proclaiming But moment n begin their the n ment they become self-chosen of special and partial creeds and then tie to the controvert hopeless anta j are and prejudice 1 religious hatred begin to Imitating The religionist says of have his have his we ena i-his we call him The W his name is more reverent in the 0 unthinkable not even for the oven a name the all-embracing we imply a personality when h. we na- a Beyond our logic- ning our the or the l or power or t It a denial of e-ast-P rather a reverent af- it This is not t abroad today what died As to S such a thing The thoughtful man 1 the existence of anything w existence cannot be proven He has thought too with to affirm I a deny the exist-j of anything or non-existence i Men a man says that he does believe in he does not 1 if he is a thoughtful affirm that in all the Infinite Here is no place for the fat intelligent he simply to say that your or ij is not That is makes What produces it The It is it is the it is the babbling about tie it is the shallow prepuces of being acquainted with He it is the offense li reason and common sense offered by the men who pretend to nj riat he has what he will do with you and me if- we do not do as we are how wc blind our eyes to reason stifle the appeal of the moral and accept a or a or a or a proposed in the name of odious and abhorrent treason and conscience it influence that is creating a Mar Old and New to the the sufficiency of the I that the knowledge jt order constitutes the basis The old view is that is entirely was not a mistake in the as it came from the cf tie Infinite it fail jn the purpose that various amend- aU Those omenta and to the world from ms- The come and gone- ave b-en miracles and saviours all of which had part of supernatural about them because of the of the natural order There the old idea of religion and the new part The old contends that unless we ally ourselves with the with these divine the moral order of the universe is not sufficient for our There is no escape from there is no possibility of welfare or i any world in other words we are As to the the possibility of man's cooperating with nature Until now that possibility has been Man has been religious for a great many hundreds of he is surfeit with he is all too scantily equipped with scientific One thing that stands in the way of the better advance of intelligence and intelligent is the hold that religion has in some form of or Praying for One would not have believed that it would be possible in the opening days of this new one would not have believed it possible for the people of a great with public schools and one would not have believed it possible that that great by a call issued through their chief executive would assemble to beseech the heavens for It is an indication of the mighty sway which superstition holds over people in the name of No small part of the duty of right-thinking men and is to relieve the name of religion from the things that make it One of the duties of the rationalist is to help clean superstition from the face of and to cleanse from the of Knowledge Is It is altogether thinkable and that if we knew all that we may sometime and ought to we could lengthen life that the young need not We have depended upon scientific knowledge for our conduct only for a few we have depended upon prayers and the counting- and the burning candles and the ceremonies and incantations for thousands and thousands of years It seems to be altogether a rational guess that nature intended every child born into the to fulfill an ample and ripe old that death is not a necessity for the and that it is an an a loss of a loss to the a waste of a disappointment of a blighting of Right Living and Right It may be that the responsibility rests upon man to find out by correct by intelligent attention to the laws of the laws that govern that it depends upon man to extend and lengthen until death shall come at only when he Why should it not bo Must death be thrust upon us whether we will or noi Isn't it within the reach of rational philosophy to think that after the boon of life has been once conferred upon after nature has taken the responsibility of organizing the brain and that if the possessor of them so and lives so life will be vouchsafed to until at weary of the tired of this longing to try some he will lie down and fall asleep to awaken somewhere I do not or pretend to know what God nor do I know or pretend to know what life nor the thing that we call nature I do know that some great mysterious power is that there is universal that the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament his that day speech unto that night knowledge unto I do know that the laws of back of all a transcendent I do know that man has found out enough to know that he has a certain latitude of co-operation with its natural laws and and by becomes vastly and I will believe that that knowledge will that intelligence will widen and expand until man shall become master of the factor that determines his own human the maker of the glad- J ness and the glory of his' own and knowing and believing these I accept them as the sufficient the religion that satisfies the brain and heart of |